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Looking Ahead 2025: Not so easy to settle down in North America
Immigration policies might change with Donald Trump becoming the US president and Canada looking for a new political command in the nation.
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Representative Image / Pexels
As everyone gets ready to usher in a bright, cheerful, and prosperous 2025, things may not be looking rosy for those who aspire to make North America their new home. There will be a change of guard in the United States on Jan.20 when Donald Trump returns to the Oval Office in the White House. Canada may not be far behind in putting a new party in the political command of the nation.
Both Canada and the US witnessed record immigration from South Asia in general and India in particular in the tumultuous year 2024, which is coming to an end, leaving behind both sweet and sour memories. Uncertain is the future of those who have no legal documentation in support of their continuation of living in either the US or Canada. It is not only the US President-elect Donald Trump who has made no secret of his intentions of deporting all those who have no legal right to be in the USA. His first axe will fall on those who have either a criminal background or are currently facing criminal charges. The number of such “aliens” could run into millions and may take a long time for the new US administration to carry out the orders of President Trump during his second term.
Canada, too, has been struggling hard to come out of the mess it created with its frequently changing and pro-immigrant policies of previous years. Finding the situation slipping out of hands, the minority government of Justin Trudeau has been desperate to restore order by promulgating new policies and programs while upsetting the applecart of young hopefuls who landed in Canada legally based on previous policies and programs and have now been told that “permanent residency status is not guaranteed for them because of the new rules.
When governments changed their policies and programs midway, hundreds of thousands of hopefuls, while believing the policies and programs of the authorities concerned, took the jump without realizing their “drowning would be inevitable.” Many of them are on the brink as statements, policies, and plans are being pronounced day in and day out. When they needed “cheap labor” or “manpower” in addition to the billions of dollars prospective immigrants were bringing with them, the Governments welcomed them with open arms. Now, after sailing through the crisis, especially the post-COVID pandemic, they find the “immigrant influx too wieldy to be controlled.”
New rules may be in place but those hoping to make it have not lost hopes. Immigration is a multi-dimensional phenomenon. So much so that people transgress international and geographical borders to reach where they want to be.
No laws are without flaws. Those who set their eyes on settling abroad find ways and means to achieve their goals. If in the recent past, “illegitimate immigration and travel agents” were using all illicit means to carry out their operations of human smuggling with a mixed rate of success, now they have also changed their modus operandi.
They have taken the mixed route of blending both legitimate and illegitimate means to send aspirants overseas. They not only exploited the existing systems, including 10-year visas or express entry as introduced by Canada but also used other means, including the use of a “political asylum route” to smuggle the aspirants by charging huge amounts as their fee.
Guiding gullible aspirants to hold protests outside embassies and consulates of the countries of their origin and get some good pictures made to show their involvement, these agents held, would strengthen the case of their candidates for “political asylum”. This led to a huge increase in the number of political asylum seekers who in turn get special treatment from the countries they want to make their new homes. Incidentally, a big number of these “political asylum seekers” came from the international student community who would invariably base their claim on fear of being “persecuted” in case they returned to the country of their origin.
The enterprising manpower and immigration agents have also come out with yet another model of mixing both “legitimate and illegitimate means” to send young able-bodied immigration aspirants abroad.
Their modus operandi was recently tracked down by the Enforcement Directorate back home in India.
The Enforcement Directorate investigated the alleged involvement of some Canadian colleges and a few Indian entities in a money-laundering case linked to the trafficking of youngsters into the US from the Canadian border.
The investigation followed the death of a four-member Indian family, hailing from Dingucha village in Gujarat, who died of extreme cold while trying to cross the Canada-US border illegally a couple of years ago.
The brains behind this racket worked in connivance with some Canadian Colleges who would admit the aspirants by getting them student visas. Once in Canada, they would walk out of the college to reclaim a full-fee refund and then head for the USA from a porous US border without realizing that it would not be easy there.
Under the new regime of Donald Trump, they would be on the first list to be deported as they do not have any legal documents to enter and stay in the USA.
The legal channels may have either closed or shrunk but there is no dearth of those who want to make it to the US or Canada. They all live in hope. They hope the year 2025 will bring them luck.
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